A very linear and less curatorial presentation of the week’s CFD news is the result of time constraints; who couldn’t use another hour now and again. But hopefully that doesn’t reduce the quality. That begins with a playlist of videos from the Flow Viz Showcase at AIAA Aviation earlier this month. Watch ’em all and pick your favorite. There’s a worthwhile read about CAD software and geometry model interoperability. Speaking of reading, how about ML for Dummies? (Has someone already written Meshing for Dummies?) All that and CFD applications and other news from around the CAE world. Shown here is a screen capture from a video of a mixing simulation from EKATO.

While we’re on the subject of mixing, Chemical Engineering magazine provides an introduction to the relevant time and length scales of mixing.

Slightly off topic but the article mentions BIM (building information management) in the context of how Disney executes its storytelling through technology convergence.

Finally, something just my speed on a topic that is often discussed by infrequently understood [by me]: Machine Learning for Dummies.

Also on my reading list of articles and tech papers [now the thickness of a ream of paper] is the Best Practice Guide to Modern Accelerators.

Not to beat a dead horse but from Nature comes The Misuse of Colour in Science Communication. “A perceptually uniform colour map weights the same data variation equally all across the dataspace, while other colour maps (such as rainbow) interpret some small data variation to be more important than others.”

Another issue near and dear to my heart is interoperability of geometry models from CAD software and in CAD Translation in the Real World, Tips and Secrets we see it described in the context of SolidWorks [Solidworks? SOLIDWORKS?] What intrigued me the most was the ranked list of file formats from most to least preferred (presumably for success of interoperability). That ranking is native format (SolidWorks file), Parasolid (SolidWorks’ geometry kernel), STEP, JT, IGES, VDA, ACIS, mesh formats. There’s a lot to discuss here. Of course the native file should be most successful, yet our unscientific survey of CFD folks indicates they’re unlikely to use the native format. Mesh formats deserve to be at the bottom of the list because they’re “alternate facts” as I like to say when it comes to geometry modeling. I think IGES is ranked a little too low because it’s a perfectly suitable format for getting geometry models out of CAD software for use in CFD as long as both the writer and reader conform to the standard.

The ESTECO Users’ Meeting North America will be held online on 26-27 October 2021.

While we’re on the topic of events, the s**t storm on social media about SC21 being held in-person tells me we’re at the friction point when events want to resume in-person but their attendees are still reluctant.

Programming for neural networks? Triton is an open-source language for GPU-accelerated neural network programming.

Visualizing 3D mesh data? Polyscope is a C++ and Python API for mesh data visualization.

CFD for heat sink design.

• Imperial College London has an opening for a Senior Research Engineer in CFD.
• Cadence in Fort Worth has an opening for an Account Technical Executive – CFD. (Translation: we’re looking for a technical sales engineer for CFD and mesh generation software products.)
• Cadence in Brussels has an opening for a Software Engineer for the OMNIS platform.

CFD for fire sprinkler activation using FDS.

CFD for electric flying cars [which is like electric aircraft but with extra steps].

The folks at Tech-Clarity are doing a survey on Avoiding Engineering Time Wasters. Your work is 100% efficient so this survey doesn’t apply to you but maybe you can share it with someone who needs some insight and help.

Thanks to alert reader Joe, we have this algorithmic dissection of classic paintings by Rembrandt, Peale, and more. Rather than destroying the original work, this dissection brings out minute details in color and stroke that illuminate the painter’s process. First seen on Colossal.